Look slike to appropriate place to post a timed analysis of Percy versus Motivator.
All of the races that were run today had corresponding events uunder the same conditions last year. Curiously, the ground was given as Good to Firm all round last year, and according to the RP, it was Good - Good to Firm in places today. I say curiously because every race run today, was run faster than it was in 2005 (the 12F, 0 - 100, was the nearest with just 0.07 seconds splitting the 2 runings). I've also calculated todays adjusted variance with the appropriate pars to be riding fast by 3.32 seconds, which is consistant with Firm.
Anyway, leaving that quibble aside, there is a total of 3.40 seconds seperating the fastest and slowest races run today to standard, as opposed to 3.27 last year. A difference of 0.13 is insignificant and to some extent the large discrepancies cancel each other out. The average unadjusted time run today was 0.39 slow and 1.41 slow last year (the like for like nature of the race comparisons removes the need to adjust for class pars). Sir Percy was clocked as running 0.77 fast, and so adjusts to +1.16, where as Motivator was clocked as running 0.31 fast and thus adjusts to +1.72; a difference of 0.56 seconds (about 3.25L's)
Personally I don't like spreads of times this big (3.40 and 3.27 respectively) it hints at a corrupted sample and I normally seek to remove those which are causing the discrepancies to grow beyond 2 seconds. This usually involves slow races, but can of course involve a particularly fast one too. On todays card the 6F listed race for 2yo's was significantly slower than the others, and with this removed the adjusted average drops to 0.04 slow, with a spread of 1.51 seconds now covering the fastest and slowest. There are at least 2 races in 2005 (and probably 3) that warrant similar treatment (those that were run 2 seconds or more behind standard). With these omitted the average is now 0.63 slow with a spread of 1.84 seconds between the fastest and slowest.
All of which means that Sir Percy has now run an adjusted time of +0.81 fast, and his benchmarker, Motivator has run +0.94 fast. (the omission of the 3rd race on the 2005 sample penalises Motivator if anything, with it included, Motivator would go 0.27 secs quicker still).
With this race omitted though, the upshot is that Motivator has run 0.13 (about 3 quarters of a length) faster than Sir Percy, (or 2.5L's with the 0-100, 6F race included)
Now it would be wrong to say that Sir Percy won't win again (aka, Kris Kin and Motivator) as these things are always relative to the opposition, and the programme that gets mapped out for him Despite all the dramas though, I'm bound to conclude this renewal was weak, and that Sir Percy isn't exactly on the pantheon of greats (quite the opposite, he's very modest). None of which takes anything away from him of course. He's won, he's in the history books, and he's worth more money tonight than he was this morning etc well done to all concerned, and those who backed him